Muslim world reaction mixed

Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s killing was mixed in the Muslim world, including in Pakistan, where former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf said that the United States should not have executed a mission within his country’s borders.

“America coming to our territory and taking action is a violation of our sovereignty,” Musharraf told CNN-IBN. “Handling and execution of the operation [by U.S. forces] is not correct. The Pakistani government should have been kept in the loop.”

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Though President Barack Obama did refer to Pakistani help in his remarks Sunday night, there was no mention of involvement in Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s statement, which said that Zadari was notified of bin Laden’s killing with a phone call from Obama.

In a statement, the Pakistani foreign ministry celebrated bin Laden’s death as “a major setback to terrorist organizations around the world.”

Over the border in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai on Monday urged the Taliban not to seek retaliation.

“We call on Taliban to learn from what happened yesterday and stop fighting,” Karzai said in a televised statement, AFP reported. “Talib, come to your country and stop the fighting and leave the weapon that the foreigners have put on your shoulders.”

In Iran, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that the United States has “no excuse” for continuing its military involvement in the Middle East now that bin Laden has been killed. “We hope that this development will end war, conflict, unrest and the death of innocent people, and help to establish peace and tranquility in the region,” he said in a statement quoted by Iran’s English-language Press TV.

The leader of the Palestinian terror group Hamas condemned bin Laden’s killing as the assassination of “a Muslim and Arabic warrior,” The Associated Press reported. Bin Laden’s death, said Ismail Haniyeh, is “the continuation of the American oppression and shedding of blood of Muslims and Arabs.”

The more moderate Palestinian Authority took an alternate view. “Getting rid of bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods — the violent methods — that were created and encouraged by bin Laden and others in the world,” spokesman Ghassan Khatib said, according to a Reuters report.

Support for bin Laden was most widespread in Palestinian territories, where 34 percent of those surveyed said they had confidence in him, down from 52 percent in 2009 and 72 percent in 2003. In Egypt, 22 percent of Egyptians surveyed this year said they have confidence in bin Laden, down from 27 percent in 2005.

Confidence in the Al Qaeda leader was never high in Turkey or in Lebanon — in 2003, his positives were 15 percent and 19 percent, respectively — but his numbers have fallen further since. In Turkey, three percent of those surveyed this year said they have confidence in bin Laden, while just one percent of those surveyed in Turkey said the same.

And in Pakistan, where bin Laden was killed, support for him has dropped from 46 percent in 2003 to 18 percent in 2010.